


The Persistence of Naivety

by orphan_account



Series: Ignorance Is a Condition of Learning [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Betrayal, Bill is Not What He Seems, Demons, Different Interpretation, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Impending Apocalypse, Magic, Reverse Pines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 22:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4197609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pacifica Southeast and her cousin, Gideon Pines, conspire to break a dream demon out of the confines of the Gleeful twins.<br/>They didn't particularly think the plan all the way through.<br/>-<br/>A/N: i wrote this loooong before weirdmaggedon and 100% predicted it lmao</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Persistence of Naivety

Pacifica held the strange, light blue orb in her hands, turning it over and watching her reflection in it. If she squinted, she could make out some faint, geometrical seam through the glass, maybe even the faint press of letters of a long-dead tongue. The text feels warm under her fingers, like a pulsating heartbeat. She's transfixed, mouth opening and closing in wonder. Comparing the rest of their adventures through town, the artifacts they'd collected... They were all nothing in comparison to the otherworldly gem she held in her hand.

“Paz, could you puh-lease, hurry up! I don’t think she’ll stay out for long!” Gideon whispered, elbowing his cousin sharply, staring over at Mabel Gleeful’s limp body, half-sagged out of the door. He picks at his fingers, soft shivers wracking through him. His soft spot, his age-old crush on Mabel was transparent, the guilt working its way through his guts. He felt a little lightheaded, a little dizzy. “Now, was it really necessary to-" 

”‘Course it was- you know as well as I do that they’re no saints.“ Pacifica found it odd that the one thing sealing Bill Cipher was laid so plainly in Dipper’s sock drawer, but shrugged it off. If no one ever came into the trailer (and left it alive), then of course a drawer would be the safest place for it. "Plus, look at what they were doing to Bill, Gids. They’re, like, psychopath-level, no doubt." 

Gideon is on the verge of stuttering out some response about how he specifically recalls Mabel telling Pacifica that they were 'sort-of-emergency-friends’ and that those types of friends didn’t do these kinds of things to their friends. But he bites his tongue, turning back to his cousin. "Hurry up n’ break it, Paz. Dipper’ll probably come home soon.” And God help them if the more frightening, the more emotionally absent Gleeful caught them with his unconscious sister, with their hands all in his pristine sock drawer. 

“Pft, Gideon, you worry way too much! Him and that Stanford guy are out buying special-effects for the show.” He raises an eyebrow at her, as if to ask how she knew that, and Pacifica guiltily averted her eyes. She resists the urge to scratch at the inner part of her elbow, where a loose seam of her jacket tickled, a silent, almost karmic reminder. Yes,it was Mabel that had told her. Wanting to do something rather than shift her eyes towards the unconscious girl in the corner, she swung her arms up, still cradling the seal. “Alright, one, two…”

“Pacifica, don’t you think this’ll-”

“Three!” With the precision and strength of a baseball player, channeling one season of lacrosse, she hurdles the glass ball at the linoleum of the travel trailer, and it shatters into little stars of fragments. Each fragment holds a strange light, shimmers and glows, and Gideon is strangely reminded of carnival glass- iridescent and rare in a confusing way. They kept their eyes on it, waiting for some sort of distinctive change that would alert them as to Bill’s freedom. Finally, under their heavy gaze, the shattered glass just… Disappeared, leaving behind no mess. 

Gideon let out a relieved breath. “We… We did it, Paz! We saved him! Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we just did that!” His mouth is stretched wide into a bright, toothy smile, little relieved tears pricking at his eyes. He holds his hands to his mouth, hiding his slightly crooked teeth behind baby-soft fingers. 

“Congrats.” The cousins froze, shoulders jumping up to their ears, both biting into their hearts. Mabel clapped her hands, shlumping herself up onto one shoulder, working her thumb into her cheekbone. She stands up completely upright slowly, shaking her head back in forth. There isn’t even a bruise on her cheek.  "You two are complete idiots.“ She turned to Pacifica. "And you throw a punch like a two-week-old kitten.”

Pacifica moved in front of Gideon, half-shielding him with her body. Even though they'd only met at the beginning of the summer, she'd practically been inducted into the Pines family, and she felt utterly responsible for him. Defensive, arms crossed, she bit out, “Look, Gleeful, we don’t want any trouble-”

“Yeah? I’ve been awake this whole time, Southeast-” No longer 'Paz’, since Pacifica had reverted to calling her by her last name, the least she could do was return the favor. Pacifica flinched, both in response to her last name and the fact that this, decidedly, had been a trap. There was no familiarity in Mabel's voice, and the icy bite to it brought to mind her brother and hit tight breathing and crossed arms. “You assaulted me, broke into my property, and broke something of mine. You definitely were looking for trouble. And-”

“We were just trying to help Bill-” Gideon put forth, rather weakly. 

Mabel stared at him blankly. There was something mocking, something utterly doubting in her stare- it makes him squirm. “Help? Bill Cipher?” All of the color drained out of Gideon’s face. “The guy’s a high-rank dream demon with no alliances, he doesn’t need help.”

Pacifica flushed angrily. She hated when anyone talked to her cousin like he was stupid. “Well, of course he needed help! You two had him trapped in that ball like a never-ending pack of double-A batteries for your show! It was all he could do to reach out to us!’

She could see Mabel’s hands curl and, for a second, she braced herself, thinking she was going to get revenge for earlier. Instead, however, they relaxed at her sides once more. And Mabel Gleeful burst into loud, uninhibited laughter.  It's frightening, it's frenzied. "What are you two? Two five-year-olds? A pair of lambs?” She clapped her hands, shaking her head again. “Bill Cipher wasn’t even being used for our powers! It’s innate ability!” As if to prove her point, the door to the trailer swung open and closed, in time with her hysterical noises.

Oh,  _God_ , Pacifica can see Mabel's nervousness, her terror, just bubbling below the surface. 

If the two of them felt frozen before, they now resembled glaciers. Gideon works his fingers into the back of Pacifica's jacket, eyes open wide, as if it would wake him up from this nightmare. “P-P-Puh-Paz,” Suprisingly, Gideon is the first to speak. “Paz, we’ve been had. We’ve been had  _real bad_." 

"Uh, Mabel?” Pacifica’s voice is soft, nervous. She hopes it isn’t too late to take back what she’d done and beg for forgiveness and a magical cure to their problems. Just like always, just like when they find shapeshifters with knives and vampires with sharp teeth, and the Gleeful twins make it all go away in their strange, magical, violent way. “M-Mabes, what do you do when you’ve released a high-rank demon into the world?”

This seemed to sober Mabel, who came back with a very eerily calm visage. Pacifica sees panic, sees fear in her eyes, but her struggle for control is admirable, in some twisted way. She's bitter, focused on the awful news she had to deliver. “Why, Pacifica, I have absolutely no clue. Considering  _I'm_  the one who went so far to prevent this from happening, I suppose you’re going to have deal with the impending apocalypse by yourselves.” She narrowed her eyes. “You see, I don’t like being hit by people I care about, Miss Southeast." 

There's an emotion there that she can't pick up, but Pacifica feels cold, feels the weight of her betrayal, and, even as time ticks on towards an impending end of the world, she wants nothing more than to apologize for hours upon end. There was something she doesn't know, something she hasn't experienced, and she doesn't want to be associated with it in Mabel's mind. 

"Mabel, you can’t just leave us like this!” Gideon pipes up, coming out from under Pacifica’s arm. “Look, I know what we did was wrong, but we thought it was right at the time! We thought we were saving someone!”

“It’s going to be a hard, hard life for you, Gideon, if you believe everyone that asks for saving deserves it.” There’s an emotional depth to her words, one neither of them had seen- something past the showgirl magic performer with a winning smile. She lets a hiss out through her teeth. “Here’s a hint for the two of you- Bill’s coming for you first. You’re loose ends now.”

“Then why isn’t he here?” There’s doubt in Pacifica’s voice, but nervousness outweighs it. As frightening as she was, as violent as she was, Mabel was  _capable_ and, often,  _right_.

“This place is heavily, heavily demon-proofed. And so am I." Mabel tucked her hand underneath her chin. She twists her tongue in her mouth, giving them one more hint than Pacifica thinks they deserve. "Bud Pines is an awfully empty-minded guy, isn’t he? He’d be a perfect, willing host. But that’s just my opinion.”

Gideon can’t even form a protest in his father’s defense, because, in his heart of hearts, he knows his dad would give up anything for his own peace of mind. “Oh, no…”

“My brother and I didn’t want this town to burn. We just wanted a place in it.” Her eyes are narrow, accusatory. “No one’s evil for evil’s sake, you two. Learn that, repeat it in front of the mirror, get a tattoo of it, I don’t care how you memorize it.”

She pauses. Breathes. There's an exhale in her voice, a mourning for what could of been, a moment of silence for the death of everything her and her brother had ever worked for.

“My brother and I were the lesser of two evils, so we tricked the greater evil. Good luck dealing with a being of pure energy without weaknesses- my tricks only worked once on him.”


End file.
